


acquired taste.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 8x21 Coda, Castiel at BigGerson's, Coda, Coffee, M/M, The Great Escapist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel finds being on the run to be unpleasant, mostly, or at least until he discovers coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	acquired taste.

Castiel finds being on the run to be unpleasant, mostly, or at least until he discovers coffee. 

It's a waitress in Bangor, Maine, who puts the idea in his head. 

He orders a glass of water, but obviously that's not right, exactly, because his waitress continues to politely hover over him, notepad in hand.

The buttons on her uniform are placed more randomly than strategically, and they flash with light at regularly-timed intervals exactly .67 seconds apart.  The buttons are distracting.  So is her hair, which has pink tips. The pin blinking fast and blue on her lapel names her  _Martha._  

"A water,  _and_?" she asks, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat.  He's not sure what she wants him to say.  But she adds kindly, "Or are you waiting for someone?"

"Oh," Castiel says.  "Yes," he answers, because he  _does_ feel like he's waiting for someone to find him.  He just hopes he can't be found.

He doubts, though, that the angels would want to discuss the location of the tablet over a Sidewinder soup and salad combo.

"How about a coffee, then?" the waitress asks, and Castiel is intrigued.  Coffee is another of those small human details he's never had occasion to experience.  He supposes that now's as good a time as any.  

"Yes, please," he tells her, and moments later she sets down a white ceramic mug before him and pours, filling it to the brim.

Castiel cautiously picks up the mug by its handle.  The coffee is just under 97 degrees Celsius.   He takes a sip, and the scalding heat instantly burns his tongue, stinging the edges of his mouth.  

He lets his vessel sputter for a moment, out of curiosity, but the sensation is not at all pleasant, so he heals the burns.  

The waitress makes a noise of flustered annoyance.  " _Sorry_ ," she says devoutly, "forgot to mention that it's still hot.  It's a fresh pot every fifteen minutes here, you know." 

"That's all right," Castiel tells her.  "I'm just used to more, ah, tepid beverages.  The ancient Egyptians, while technologically advanced for their time, never managed to invent heating pads."  

He glances slyly at her, but  _Martha_  doesn't seem to get the joke.  She glances at his overcoat and wrinkled suit. "Uh-huh."

He smiles politely and waits until she heads back into the kitchen before telling the coffee to be a more reasonable temperature. 

Castiel takes another sip, but the coffee is hardly more palpable at 58 degrees Celsius. Well, he's heard Dean say that coffee is an acquired taste.  He tries another sip.  Still no good.

He uncertainly tells the coffee to be 76 degrees Celsius, and tastes it.  Well, that's better, but he still can't say he likes the sensation.  

The waitress has left a small pile of creamers, napkins, and packets of sweetener, both sugar and Splenda, on the edge of the table, so Castiel tears open a creamer and adds it experimentally to the coffee.  He stirs in the creamer with one of the thin red straws left for that purpose, but before he can take a sip, the walls of this particular BigGerson's flicker and reverberate.  

 _Angels_ , Castiel thinks, and reluctantly sets down the ceramic mug.  He would have liked to find out what coffee with creamer tasted like.  He blinks and takes himself to a BigGerson's in Toledo, Ohio.  

His waiter's wearing yellow suspenders over his red uniform.  "I'm waiting for someone," he tells  _Alec_.  "Just coffee."  

 _Alec_ rolls his eyes and doesn't try to pretend that he isn't.  He turns away, and Castiel hastens to adds, "With cream, please."

The coffee he sets in front of Castiel is paler than the coffee he'd had in Bangor.  Castiel makes sure to tell this coffee to be 78 degrees Celsious.  He does not want to be burned again.  

But it's hardly necessary; the cream makes the coffee slightly less hot in any case.  Castiel lets the taste of the coffee roll over his tongue, and  _o_ _h_.  This is good, far better than the too-hot, then too-cold coffee he'd had in Bangor.  And he doesn't have to sip it, after all.  When it's just middling warm and milky-flavored like this, Castiel can take large swallows of coffee.

"This is good," he mentions to  _Alec_ , but  _Alec_  walks by his table without stopping.

He drinks the mug half-way down and then decides to add sweetener, but the coffee's gone almost-lukewarm and the Splenda doesn't melt completely, leaving large lumps of not-quite-melted not-quite-sugar floating in the mug.  

Castiel considers ordering another cup of coffee, since he's fairly certain that his own method of changing the temperature of the drink does not perform any favors for the taste, but the glass in the windows begins to splinter around the edges of the frames, so he takes himself to a BigGerson's in Laredo, Texas.  

"Coffee?" asks  _Annalise_ skeptically, and Castiel realizes that it's nearly 38 degrees Celsius outside.  "You sure?"

Castiel decides to ask for advice.  He's been told by Dean on several occasions that he needs to work on this.  "What would you recommend instead?"

 _Annalise_ is sweating through her uniform.  She drags a hand through her limp brown bangs.  "Well, if you order pie, it comes with ice cream," she offers.

He's heard Dean's prayers, every one.   _Pie_ is something Dean likes to talk about in his prayers.   _Pie_ is one of the benefits that Dean offers in his prayers if Castiel will just come home, please.  Dean has taken to baking.   _I made a pie, Cas.  First time I ever baked anything.  Come back and you can have some._

 _Pie_ is a bargaining chip.  Dean's looking forward to introducing Castiel to pie, in some vague, distant future Castiel's uncertain of ever sharing.  "No, I shouldn't," he says anyway.  He wants to save  _pie_ for Dean.

"On a diet?"  _Annalise_ asks sympathetically.  

"I have a heart condition," he tells her.  It's true, but it's also not true.  Castiel is becoming a master at these half-truths.  "Just coffee, please."

She brings him his coffee and he tells it to be 22 degrees Celsius.  It will be cold and likely it'll taste terrible, but the air conditioning at this BigGerson's isn't functioning correctly and his vessel objects by sweating through his layers of suit and overcoat.   _Annalise_ smiles at him when she takes away his menu, and he tries to smile back.

"Your dog isn't missing," he tells her, because he likes her crooked smile and the fact that she's covering a shift for  _Dolores_ right now even though it's supposed to be her day off.  "He's been locked inside your neighbor's basement for the past two days."

This doesn't seem to reassure her.  "Oh my  _god_ ," she says, covering her hand with her mouth. A trickle of sweat slides down her cheek.  Or it might have been a tear.  Castiel's not certain.  "It's  _scorching_ outside, and they just left on vacation-"

"There's a leak in the pipes," Castiel tells her.  "He's had water.  And you can get in through the window.  That lock doesn't work right anymore."

He tries a smile on her again, and she grins back this time.  "Thank god, that's a relief," she says. "I've been so fucking worried.  I guess you saw the signs around the neighborhood, Mr.-?"

But the coffee cup on the table is rattling.  "He'll be all right," Castiel tells her.  "Don't worry."  

He takes himself to a BigGerson's in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  

"You know," he says contemplatively to  _Emily_ , "I had no idea what you were up to when you all started domesticating dogs.  Taking those wild pups into your camps, letting them sleep by your side.  It seemed foolish.  At first.  What was the value?  Why would you do something so potentially dangerous?"

"I had a St. Bernard named George,"  _Emily_ says.  "He saved my life once, when I was little.  I got lost in the woods behind our house one night, and he found me."  

"But do you think," Castiel muses, "that you really knew that one day those once-feral animals would repay their kindness?  Or were you only ever going on faith?"

"I don't know,"  _Clara_ says, staring.  She's picking at her notepad and glancing around desperately at the other waitresses, hiding behind the counter and pretending not to notice either of them.  

She looks at him nervously, and Castiel feels rather put out.  Probably he needs to work on conversation openers, like Dean says, he reflects.  Castiel wishes she were more inclined to conversation.  He's feeling philosophical at the moment.  "I'm really more of a cat person myself," she says, laughing too-quick, as if he's said something funny.

"I like cats too," he attempts to tell her, but she hurriedly abandons his table without taking his order.  

He's at a BigGerson's in Asheville, North Carolina, and it's the best cup of coffee he's had yet: milk, whipped cream, melted chocolate.  It's a specialty coffee: a  _mocha latte_.  He tries to imagine what Dean would think of this coffee.   _Imagination_ is something he's trying to cultivate, in his spare time.

One of his wilder imaginations involves having coffee with Dean.  Castiel pictures Dean in that familiar dark blue jacket, sitting across the table from him.  In his imagination, Dean's raising an eyebrow at the  _mocha latte_  and saying, "No, I don't want a taste of your coffee, Cas, do I  _look_  like I've grown a vagina?"

"I like it," he tells Dean indignantly, in his imagination.

"Hurry and drink it up, so we can go home," Dean tells him, and his boot collides with Cas's under the table.

"You're not done with your burger," Castiel points out.

"Do you want a bite?" Dean's offering, but there's a high-pitched ringing building in his ears, and Castiel reluctantly opens his eyes and takes himself to a BigGerson's along the New Jersey turnpike.  

Her name tag says her name is  _Rachael_ , but Castiel is aware that her real name is  _Katie_.  

"What does it mean, to need someone?" he asks her.  She pauses, leaning over him, coffee pot in hand.  There are bruises up and down her arms, under her red uniform, and her cheek is puffy.

She looks at him from under the sweep of hair across her face.  "I'm sorry?" she asks.

"Just a coffee," he says.  She doesn't bring him creamer or sugar, but he finds he can drink it black.

"I don't understand why he'd say that," he says to  _Britt_ in Manhattan.    

"Cream or sugar?" she asks. He knows that she really only wants to take a smoke break, maybe close her eyes for a few minutes.  But she bring him a refill before her shift is over.

"Both, please."

His waitress's name is  _Elizabeth_.  She has long gray hair pulled back into a bun.  It was chestful and curly at her wedding, when she was twenty-two.  

"Your husband died twelve years ago," he tells her.  "Why are you still wearing your wedding ring?"

She looks down at the worn-thin gold band on her finger and smiles a little, but her eyes turn down at the corners.

"Well, I loved him so much," she says.  "Only man in the world for me.  I just never could let him go."

Her name is  _Julia,_ and this BigGerson's is in Indiana.  She looks him over and gives him a wide smile, and Castiel likes her immediately.  The restaurant is nearly empty, so she leans over his table and shows him picture after picture of her two-year-old son.

"Do you have a family?" she asks.

"I do," he says, pleased at the question, pleased at the answer.  "Do you want to see?"

He makes himself a wallet and fills it with pictures, the ones he's seen before in Bobby's house, in Sam and Dean's wallets. He pulls the wallet out of his coat pocket and hands her the photographs.  

"Are they your brothers?"  _Julia_ asks.

"They are my friends," he tells her.  She whistles, but then she winks at him.   Castiel understands that she's joking.  "They single? Because I've got this friend..."

"Dean isn't involved with anyone right now," he says stiffly.  Not in his prayers, but in those moments before he falls asleep sometimes, Dean will look up at the ceiling and mutter,  _Haven't been able to get it up in_ twoyears,  _you fucker, and i_ _t's all your fault, damnit._

 _Julia_  doesn't laugh.

"Maybe he's waiting for the right person to come along," she suggests.  Castiel likes that thought.  "Or maybe he's waiting for the right person to come back."

"Maybe," he says, though he doesn't agree.  Dean isn't waiting on anyone.  Castiel would know.

"You look like you've been on the road for a while," she says gently.  "I bet he misses you an awful lot, your friend."

Castiel doesn't really have anything to say to that, so he doesn't answer.   _Julia_ hands him back the picture of Dean and Sam, and he carefully tucks it back into his wallet.  She touches him on the arm, and he looks down.

"Maybe you should call him," she says.  "Your friend. Could he pick you up, take you home?"

"No," he says firmly.  "I've got a job to do."

"Do your friends even know where you are?" she asks, but he shakes his head,  _no_.  "Don't you think they might be worried about you?"

The floor shakes underneath his boots.  He stares at his lap.  "I'm sure they're all right," he says instead.

"Don't you have a phone?"

"Not anymore.  It's gone," he says.

"You can borrow mine," says  _Julia_.  

"I've got to go," he says.  "Thank you."

"You look like you've been on the road for a long time," says his waitress.  She has blonde hair and a three-month-old baby.  Her name tag says her name is  _Kara_.  

Castiel tries to smile at her as she pours his coffee.  "I feel like I've been on the road forever."

 


End file.
